Do not be sad about what you do not have. Instead, be happy about what you do have. If you will be sad about what you don't have, you will not be happy about what you do have.

If a man's aspirations towards a righteous life are serious.. .if he earnestly and sincerely seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food, because, not to mention the excitement of the passions produced by such food, it is plainly immoral, as it requires an act contrary to moral feeling, i. e., killing - and is called forth only by greed.

He felt like a man who, after straining his eyes to peer into the remote distance, finds what he was seeking at his very feet. All his life he had been looking over the heads of those around him, while he had only to look before him without straining his eyes. p 1320

Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!

Just as a painter needs light in order to put the finishing touches to his picture, so I need an inner light, which I feel I never have enough of in the autumn.

Do not be sad about what you do not have. Instead, be happy about what you do have. If you will be sad about what you don't have, you will not be happy about what you do have.

Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone?